Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens: A Getaway for Lil’ Sprouts

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine, offer an impressive array of social activities, summer camps, family events, and field trips designed to appeal to young children and their families. The CMBG makes an excellent destination for families, with an array of impressive gardens and an excellent café (much of the produce comes directly from CMBG’s own Burpee Kitchen Garden, located just outside their doors) and also has an informative Dig It! Gardening Blog that includes extensive lists of what’s in bloom at the garden each week– a great educational research for parents who want to take the lessons of the garden home with them. Below, Garden Collage spotlights some of the Botanical Gardens’ best summer kids programming.

Garden Explorers Camp

• Budding gardeners will spend the week digging, planting, watering and harvesting at the Learning Garden and greenhouse, as each Lil’ Sprout will learn how to garden and care for plants.
• Garden Explorers Camp aims to investigate “the inner workings of a garden from the ground up and get the real ‘dirt’ on plants, life cycles, composting, garden critters and more!”
• The week-long camp takes place August 3-7 from 9:30 AM to 1 PM for kids ages 4-5. Another camp for children aged 6-8 will take place during the same hours from August 10-14.
• Projects include making new observations about the garden, running experiments, taste tests, games, and doing take-home garden projects. In celebration of this year’s theme at the Gardens, this camp will include activities that explore the myth, magic, and medicine of plants.

Garden Puppet Theater, Nature Investigations, Chicken Feeding

• Offered daily from June 15 to August 31 in the Children’s Garden
• Access to the grounds is free with admission
• Garden Puppet Theater begins at 11 AM, Nature Investigations start at 12:30 PM, and Chicken Feeding starts at 1:30 PM

Fairy Friday

• The play-activity of Fairy Friday involves transforming the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens into a wonderland for little fairies, gnomes, elves, and wood sprites. The Bibby and Harold Alfond Children’s Garden offers fairy music and dancing on the maze, fairy puppet shows, stories, dress-up, crafts, yoga, games, the garden’s signature “Great Bubble Machine”, and the opportunity to build fairy houses in the garden.
• Fairy Friday takes place every Friday in July and August

Cider Sundays

• Cider Sundays give kids and their families the opportunity to learn about apple cider pressing, which the garden programming refers to as “one of our country’s greatest and tastiest seasonal traditions”. Guests will learn the basics of making apple cider as the beautiful gardens makes its transition into Fall.
• Cider Sundays take place September 20 to October 11 in the Bibby and Harold Alfond Children’s Garden. No reservations required.